That’s Black Label

Zakk Wylde
Zakk’s House
January 27, 2007

(This photo and many others now available for sale. Email: IamKevin@fairwarning.com)

I have to be honest, I have known Zakk Wylde for a number of years and I love the guy to death…but for some reason, nothing with Zakk ever goes smoothly. I knew in the back of my mind when I accepted this assignment, I was walking into a trap.

Ruin Magazine had hired me to do a shoot with Zakk at his home. Off the bat I was a bit worried about not being on neutral ground – Zakk had the hometown advantage. I made a deal with Rick, the magazine’s editor, that we would go together and stick together – no matter what happened. What should have been a one hour shoot came in at a whopping nine and a half hours. To make a very long story short, Rick and I were tested in every way imaginable and pushed to our limits.

Imagine having to bench press freeweights before we can get strarted; imagine having to drink countless bottles of beer when you don’t really drink; imagine having to wear lucha libre wrestling masks while chatting with Zakk as he wears a leather gimp mask; imagine watching Zakk pump iron until he screamed in pain; imagine watching Rick get his face shoved and licked up by a British Bulldog as he is forced to do leg lifts; imagine being shanghaied and taken to a seedy biker bar for hours on end for more drinking; imagine having to pick up the tab at that bar after all that drinking; imagine driving up a mountainous dirt road in pitch blackness in the heaviest rains we had seen in years; imagine being caught in a mudslide and nearly flipping my SUV; imagine going through all of this and yet, in the end, receiving the warmest hugs and kisses from Zakk Wylde.

That was our day, that was our night. And you know what? I would have been disappointed if it happened any other way. That’s Black Label.